I have used a blogs to relay information to my students for years now. I am happy to avoid wasting paper but also to prevent any “I lost the form” or “I missed class, I didn’t know what the homework was.” claims in class. In this way, it leaves a sort of (non)paper trail that shows my students had all the information they needed.

The blog, or any online communication platform for students, should be more than that, of course. In the past, I have pushed the internet tools part of class as far as I could and found diminishing returns very quickly. In my current classes, I can only use ten percent of the student’s grade for homework. Having the students sign in to a common website and share information and consistently spend time is difficult to impossible.

The Herald hosts an interview with Alain de Botton, who has recently authored a book, Religion for Atheists. With the understanding that my views are based solely on this interview and that I have not seen the book, I am at a loss for who he thinks his book is for.

Some excerpts:

“(My family thought) if you are intelligent, you believe in science. … And with respect to my parents, I nevertheless moved away from that position. And even though I am still an atheist, I am now much more sympathetic to many of the lessons and traditions of religion.”

The newly released Korean edition, published five months ahead of the English edition, is de Botton’s philosophical account on how “people who don’t believe in supernaturals” can also benefit and learn from religious teachings and practices.

I've been very lazy lately, I had meant to blog more often, since we are traveling so slowly and I have the time. Yet I find myself always finding something else to do! From laying on the beach, to walking through a street market and stopping at several vendors for some snacks (fried bananas, YUM!), or learning about the history of the country I am falling in love with. Talking with everyone, tuk tuk drivers and children, makes you think about what's fair in the world and sometimes question God, and that takes a lot of time! After riding go karts or spending our day at a museum that was once a school then turned into a Khmer Rouge prison and torture house for four years, we can finish off our night with dinner, where we share our meal with a 6 year old boy with holes in his clothes, who eats every grain of rice, even the vegetables he obviously didn't like.